Anyone who is going to be gardening for the first time or, particularly if you are going to be introducing a child to gardening, it’s always nice to have some rapid results. Unlike something like planting corn, where you plant it as early in the season as possible, and then hope that you don’t have an early winter, which could kill it before it produces anything, it’s nice to have some quick results. Radishes are good for that. Sprouts emerge within days of planting the seeds, and they are ready for harvesting within a month. Because the seeds are small, you might have to do some thinning within a couple of weeks. Parsley can be even faster, and can sometimes be harvested within three weeks of planting, and if you harvest twenty percent or less of the plant, it will quickly rejuvenate and produce more for your table. Some lettuces, such as Romaine, can be harvested as early as thirty days after planting. Spinach leaves can be ready for harvesting in as early as four to six weeks, plus the spinach plant will continue growing and producing new leaves well into the summer. Snow peas take about ten days to germinate, and are ready for harvesting in a couple of months. Some varieties of bush beans are ready for harvesting within forty to sixty-five days after planting. Turnips produce edible leaves as well as the turnip roots. The leaves can be harvested after about forty days, while the roots will be ready in a couple of months, depending on the size you’re looking for. Although the fruit of the zucchini plant won’t be ready to harvest for about seventy days, the zucchini plant will take over your garden plot within a few weeks. They should be spaced out at least two feet apart.
If I was going to grow anything it would be spinach, I go through lots and lots of spinach. Since I buy the trimmed, washed 3 times bagged ones it's not cheap. One bag of spinach if sautéed is nothing...one meal.
I often plant radish seeds along with slower sprouting seeds., such as carrots. The radishes will come up in just a few days, and you can tell where the row is very easily. By the time that the carrots are starting to grow, all of the radishes will be harvested and gone. I just started some spinach in the Aerogarden , and as it grows, I can harvest leaves for salads. There won't be enough for cooking it, because. (Like @Chrissy Page said), it shrinks to almost nothing when you cook it. Probably, by the time it is up and growing, I can plant it outside. Last year, the birds and squirrels ate all of the findable seeds that I planted, so none of the spinach or lettuce even had a chance to sprout. I hate having to buy starts for salad greens, so hopefully, starting those kinds of things inside will work better for me.
From what I remember, the first plant that I had cared for was the piece of ginger in the kitchen that has a pointed bud. My husband urged me to plant it. He showed me how and I seemed to have accomplished the first crop in my life. I had planted that ginger in the planter box fronting the kitchen door. In the weeks to come, it sprouted some leaves until it became a full fledged plant. And since I'm not a plant lover, I was kind of surprised when my husband told me that my ginger had flowers. He said that ginger does not bear flowers so he was wondering why my ginger had one. After a month or 2, we harvested the ginger to my delight. The ginger was almost half a kilo. And that's the reason how I started to be a plant lover.
Another to add to your list, Ken is beets. When beets get about four inches tall they need to be thinned, The thinnings are delicious, just wash them and cook the whole thing roots and all. You can continue to harvest some of the leaves while they are young then you get the beets later.
This is a great thread, I'm glad you started it, Ken. I think seeing immediate (or at least fairly quick) results would help me in this regard, as well. I wasn't aware that some crops developed sooner than others. My dad had two large gardens, but I was busy working and going to school at the time, and didn't pay attention to things like that. I don't have a lot of room, but I could definitely plant romaine and spinach to go with my tomatoes and other lettuce. @Sheldon Scott beets are one of my favorite vegetables, and they're expensive at the store, hopefully I can grow some of those, as well.
I don't remember how quickly it grew but when I lived in Texas, I planted four chard plants in a couple of planters outside my front door. Since I was in the Rio Grande Valley, where we would go several years without a freeze, it was always producing leaves, which I used in salads, in soups, or as a stand-alone vegetable similar to spinach, and those four plants kept me in chard. The leaves were large and whenever I cut a couple of the larger ones to use, others would take their place.
Out of all the leafy greens there is one I don't like because it's too bitter. Does anyone know which one that would be. I'm sure it's not Swiss chard because I eat that frequently but it's either mustard or collard and I've been afraid to buy either because I can't remember.
Mustard can be bitter, especially if the leaves get too big. Collards are always good. Ken, Swiss chard is a very close relative of beets.
I just ordered some rainbow chard from eBay yesterday, and after reading Ken's post about growing his chard in a container, I think that is what I will do with mine also. Last year, none of the early greens came up at all. No beets, collards, no lettuce, no spinach. None of it. I think that the squirrels must have munched it up along with my cucumbers and squash (which I planted later on , of course ) We did have a lot of rain early last spring; so it is possible that they were washed away, or just plain drowned. In any case, this year, I am started them inside ! I have started some spinach and lettuce, and may just leave those in the pots that I started them in. The Beefsteak tomatoes are growing and looking fine, and today I transplanted the sugar baby watermelons into little pots and started some Black Krim tomato seeds in the Aerogarden . It is supposed to be up to 60 here later this week; so that should be a good day for me to get outside and do some things in the yard and garden areas. I ordered some of those little peat disks that expand when you water them, and when they arrive from Amazon, I can start more of the early outside greens and veggies. I just love spring and especially being able to start getting things ready for the garden again !
Sugar baby watermelons are one of the smaller melons, similar to the ones you often see in stores. They are always almost as expensive as the larger ones; but for just two people, one huge melon takes up WAY too much room in our refrigerator. The sugar babies are just a little larger than a cantaloupe; and are about the right size for us. We both love watermelons; and get them a lot when they are in season. But we usually end up getting a large one, and then shoving everything else around in the fridge until we get the watermelon eaten up. It would be awesome to be able to just go out and pick one when we wanted watermelon ! I planted some last year; but they just didn't grow. I think maybe it was the clay that we have here. They never got even close to having a watermelon, although the did get blossoms. This year, I will grow them in better soil and in the large planters and see if they will produce melons. I figured that if I start them inside now; but the time the weather gets warm enough to put them outside, they should already be good-sized plants.
Okay, now I think I know what they are. Those tiny ones that Costco sells 2 to a bag. I don't know what we have here in Fresno but you need a drill to dig a hole that's how hard the dirt is.